Weekend Wrap Up: William Tucker explains how the dollar could eventually collapse; Brian Doherty responds to Matthew Yglesias column on the gold standard.

In The American Spectator, William Tucker explains how the dollar could eventually collapse.

“But the real danger lies in the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency. This is the legacy of our hugely productive economy during and after World War II when we played the role of world leadership. “At the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944, the major western powers turned over responsibility for maintaining a stable world currency to the United States,” says Lewis Lehrman, the long-time advocate of the gold standard. “Unfortunately, it’s a responsibility that we haven’t fulfilled.”

“Until 1971, the dollar was pegged to gold at $35 an ounce. But with inflation raging and gold flying out of Fort Knox, President Nixon renounced the exchange rate and said that the dollar would float against other currencies. “Since 1971 we’ve been living in an era of inconvertible paper currency,” says Lehrman. Gold now sells at $1300 an ounce, a 2000 percent depreciation since 1971.”

On Slate, Matthew Yglesias says the goal of Cato’s upcoming monetary convention is “to give the case for free markets a profound moral reading rather than a pragmatic one, and that reading is hard to maintain in the face of a modern monetary system.”

In Newsmax, Steve Forbes details the importance of stabilizing the dollar in the ongoing financial crisis.

From Forbes.com, John Tamny discusses the anti-progress absurdity of bank-capital requirements.